Gadgets for future wishlist

Five cool devices that are set to become must haves for home and office

The IDEA (International Design Excellence Awards) is a premier international design competition held each year in Virginia, US. Though a lot of industrial products—from fork lifts to drills—win awards, this year at Idea 2008, it was the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry Curve that walked away with the honours.
Of the 1,517 entries received by the organisers, Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA), this year, 205 were judged good enough for awards. In my column this week, I list the 5 devices that I think will hit the mainstream and will soon be on your gizmo wish list.

Eneloop Solar Cell Charger N-SC1S
Solar energy is a hot topic of discussion these days. So you can be sure that the eneloop Solar Charger will be on everyone’s mind. It is a charger that you keep in the sun for charging. It has a USB connector, and you can charge any device that accept a USB connector for charging (MP3 players, some cameras, and most cellphones). The device can also recharge your regular AA or AAA batteries (rechargeable) without using electricity mains. The Sanyo device should be available here soon.

C2 Climate Control from Herman Miller
Already available in stores in the US, the C2 Climate Control conforms to what is called human-centered design. To keep you comfortable at your desk, the Be Collection’s C2 heats, cools and filters the air you breathe. It utilises less than 1.5 amps of current, and turns off after four hours automatically. It can stand on your desk and conveniently micro control your micro environment.

Silicone Travel Bottle
In this age of a flat-world business, time spent on the road has increased massively. Fearing water-borne diseases, travellers carry their own water bottles. For those who want to travel light or fear leakage, here is a marvellous design by Paul Koh. A bottle that is easy to clean, doesn’t leak and is easy to squeeze. In addition, it’s a cool looker. Available for $20 for a set of two. Pricey, but then, aren’t all designer stuff?

Decathlon Artengo RollNet
The only thing available in India right now at a price of Rs 1,399, this roll-up table tennis net helps you convert any flat surface—a table, a drawer unit, the top of a cycle rickshaw—into a ping pong table. Its winding and clipping systems allow you to easily mount/unmount the net.

Haworth Brazo LED Lights
LED lights are everywhere these days—torches, toys, knick-knacks. Here’s one, more upmarket stuff. The Haworth Brazo is an office table lamp that saves power and gives an eco edge to the office environment (LEDs use lesser energy than CFLs but produce more light). With a stainless steel body, this is the first LED lamp to offer focus control. The 360 degree head rotation and the 90 degree head adjustability allow tangle-free manoeuvrablity.

For interesting additional information and details of other winners, visit idsa.org
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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday July 27th, 2008.

THE iSUBSTITUTE

How you can make believe that the iPod Touch 2.0 player is the iPhone
The new iPhone 3G released last weekend, but we in India are still far from getting one in our hands. I have a solution. And it’s not a clone or another so-called iPhone beater. It’s the new iPod Touch 2.0.

I know it’s not a phone, but it does everything that the iPhone does—other than call, of course. The iPod Touch 2.0 has in-built Wi-Fi, an email client, Safari web browser, capability of using mobile ME, applications, a cool version of Google Earth, Contact Search, Multiple Calendar Support, Push Email with MS Exchange Capability, Web clips, and improved attachment viewing. Now that’s a lot in a music player.

The Wi-fi makes this a better buy than other MP3 players because you can not only view YouTube videos directly online—without having to first download them to your PC and then sync them to your iPod—but you can also buy/download music directly to your iPod.

The Email client means that if you are sick and tired of lugging around that laptop at home, you have a smart substitute that lets you send/receive emails, maybe check the stock index, all while catching the show on television.

The screen is large, and is sensitive to gravity (turn it around for landscape in landscape mode, portrait in the straight up mode, etc).

You can use Google Earth to locate your house or to browse the streets of your city now that everything is mapped, and you can use the search on it for some directions (though this is admittedly not always precise) as long as you have Wi-fi connectivity.

The Notes application is interesting—I could pen down my MITs (Most Important Things) without any headache. Its capability to render PDF Files, and open Word and Excel files was something that was totally gratifying.

Safari works well, is fast and precise, though with e-banking sites requiring Internet Explorer, this device may not be the best to access your account details.

The music handling is great, and the switch from album art to lyrics was something that a lot of the people I showed the new iPod Touch to found interesting. Video rendition is brilliant, though YouTube was still jerky, thanks to slow broadband speeds in India. On a long road trip, I was listening to music for more than 10 hours, so when Apple claims 22 hours of battery time, I believe them.

The tie in with Mobile ME meant I could synchronise my address book from my Mac laptop with my Windows desktop and the iPod easily.

There were some interesting applications at the newly opened Web Apps store, but I did not test many of these. What I found engrossing was the one that turns your iPod Touch, or your iPhone, into a piano. Nice. With more applications now being developed both for the iPhone and the Ipod Touch, this goes from being a mere musical device to a more intriguing machine capable of lots of things.

The price ranges from Rs 15,000 for an 8 GB version to Rs 25,000 for a 32 GB version.
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The above article appeared in the The Indian Express, on Sunday July 20th, 2008

LONG-TERM BARGAIN

The funny looking, eco-friendly car can be a good low-cost second vehicle

The other day, when the Reva was launched—re-launched rather—in Delhi with the state Government offering sops, I thought I’d check out the tiny eco-friendly car. One look and you know the electric-powered Reva cannot be anyone’s primary car, just one that can be used for chores and errands.
Build: The shape of the vehicle is peculiar but it grows on you. The body is built of ABS plastic, which the company claims is dent proof. The steering wheel is a tad small, the instrument panel of bad quality, the hand brake difficult to use and the brakes hard. The curved windscreen is nice, but the hatch is a little troublesome. And if you want to fold up the rear seats to make space, you’ve got rubber straps to hook them to!
Drive: Start the car and it comes on without an engine hum. The Reva does not have a clutch either but the handling was good. I drove the car at about 50 kmph, and loved the feel of its spunky engine.
Seating: Enough for two adults if you are not too tall. Two small children can be accommodated in the rear.
Air conditioner: Brilliant, the test drive unit cooled up pretty fast.

Beyond just the smiles you get when you drive along, there are a few things to remember about the Reva:
Changing the battery: The 8-battery set has a warranty of one year only. The company says you will not need to change them for at least 3 years. But given that a battery life is 18-24 months, you have to prepared to pay Rs 60,000 every two years for a replacement set.
Maintenance cost: The company claims a maintenance cost of Rs 600 every three months for service done at your door step. But it’s more likely that you will also have to spend an extra Rs 200 for basic maintenance like replenishing the battery water, etc.
So, does it make sense to buy this car? Well, a company buying the car makes a lot of sense since it can claim 80 per cent depreciation in the first year. To an individual buyer in Delhi, the sops (no registration tax, no VAT, no excise) makes the Reva an interesting option. Elsewhere, it could interest the quirky and those committed to the environment. But, having said that, it could become the mode of transport for a young couple in metros if they drive at odd hours to work 15-20 km apart. A businessman offering small services (computer repairs, A/C servicing, etc) can also think of the car for himself and/or a team member. The car is cheap to run and can be charged at the customer’s end.
One more question: Is there a future for the car? The biggest cost component from my view is the ABS body. Reva could have used fibreglass and brought down the cost. Besides, the Reva is not a hybrid, which uses both electricity and fuel. As it is, it cannot switch to a biofuel for a drive longer than the 80 km it can run on one 8-hour charge. Also, besides the charging points at home, none are available in the public places. You cannot charge it at your usual parking lots, but with shopping malls now installing 15 amp power sockets that a Reva requires for charging, maybe a mall parking could be a pitstop.
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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday July 13, 2008.

THEM CLONES

Statutory warning: This article is not to be taken to mean the column is encouraging piracy.

That said, let me add that there are times when you do need to back up those DVDs of your favourite movies in case your careless niece leaves it to the mercy of the dog.

Happily for us, DVD writers don’t cost much these days and with writable DVDs available for as little as Rs 7 per disc, making a duplicate copy of a movie can be an easy home project.

But did you know you can’t really copy a DVD directly as they are protected? That is a problem of sorts. However, there are ways to bend the system, so to say.

The first step is the arm ourselves with a software called DVD Shrink. It’s available for free on the Internet, so all one has to do is to go to http://tinyurl.com/dvdshrink and download it. We need some utilities. So, go to http://tinyurl.com/vobtool and http://tinyurl.com/dvddecrypt. While downloading and installing them, remember to instal DVD Shrink the last. Once installed, set a few preferences. For this, you will need to press Edit and Preferences.
Set target DVD size to DVD 5 (4.7GB).
Check Hide Audio and Subpicture Streams of Insignificant Size.
Check Automatically Open VIDEO_TS subfolders.

Now move on to the Preview Tab, and make sure you select Stereo Stream, not 5.1. Next go to the Output Files tab and put a check mark in Remove Macrovision Protection. Leave the rest of the options as Default and press OK

Once this is done, you can start work on backing up the DVD. Click on Open Disk and you will get a list of available DVD drives on your PC. Select the one that has the movie. Press OK, click on the Open Files button. This will open the Video_TS directory. Select the file that you see. The software will then run some quick analysis. Just let it do its work, which is not a long process.

Once the analysis is complete, we can go ahead and select the movie subtitles that we want to save as well as the sound tracks. DVDs can store data in more than one language on its sound track, but when you want a back up it is possible that you don’t want the French or the Chinese versions. Since all you may want is the version in English, why clog up the disc unnecessarily? The screen is split into five parts. On the left, you can see the disc structure, Menu/Movie/Extras. If you don’t want to the Menu and Extras in the back-up, you can deselect them on the right by unchecking the boxes on the file details. Similarly in the main movie, you can uncheck languages that you feel you don’t require.

On the lower left you will see the preview of the movie, and on the bottom a bar that shows you the disk capacity. If the bar is red, it means you have more content than the blank DVD can hold. You could try deselecting some unneeded options to bring down the size of the file. It it’s green, it’s time to go to the next step

Click on the Backup Button at the top and it will start to make a copy of the DVD’s content. And soon enough, you have the clone of the original disc.

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The Article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday, July 6, 2008

No Popcorn Pleasure

Renting movies from Big Flix has its good and bad moments

THERE was a time when DVD players were expensive and not all of us had them in our homes. But the mass production factories in South Korea have brought down the prices. My first DVD Player in 2000 cost me Rs 23,000, and now I can buy a branded player for under Rs 3,000. So the problem isn’t the player now, the DVDs are. The movies you want to watch are still cost Rs 299+ and this makes the movie rental business interesting. Seventymm took the lead, then came in guys like Moviemart, and now big brother Reliance has entered the business with Big Flix.

Big Flix is spending millions on advertising, and it appeared a bargain to be able to rent movies unlimited for unlimited time at just Rs 299 a month. A month ago, I took the bait. It took me less than two minutes to sign up on www.bigflix.com. I was surprised to see that contrary to their ads, they had a limited number of regional language films, but for those whose basic choices will be English and Hindi films, they have enough. They offer the option of renting out 1, 2 or 3 discs at a time.

In the FAQ section, I learnt I needed a wishlist of at least 25 titles to ensure timely delivery. I opted for some 30-odd titles and waited for my movies to arrive. I had registered on a Saturday and presumed I wouldn’t hear from anybody till Monday. But Sunday brought a surprise visitor who came armed with two titles from my selection. However, he demanded that I hand over two movies I had borrowed. I informed him I was a new member and that I did not have any Big Flix items in my possesion, but he would have none of it. A ring to their call center on Monday (no responses on Sunday) ironed things out, and I was told this would not recur.

But things went wrong after that with confusion over titles delivered, about the number of discs I was entitled to borrow at a time and other hassles that left me aghast at the ineptness of the whole operation. Even after sending an email to customer care (an automatic ticket number was allocated and I was assured my complaint would be looked into), two weeks down the line, the discs don’t arrive on time, no one from customer care answers and movies automatically go into a pick up request.

I kept a movie for more than five days to see if I could hang on to it for as long as I wanted. I got a courteous SMS reminder reminding me of my misdemeanour and asking me to arrange a pick up.

Here is the score sheet

Customer Service: Worst possible
Movie listing: Good. Claims 15,000 titles.
Staff: Courteous generally, but most of them are ex-courier boys so some can be off-putting.
Presentation: The movies come packed in their original boxes. Some discs never played on my players due to a lot of scratches.
Delivery: No guarantees, erratic.
Pros: Big Flix has stores across the country, so you can always go there and pick up movies or return them easily. Online site could have been better, but it is improving.
Cons: If you want to watch a specific movie on a specific day, you are good either buying it or watching it on Video on Demand on DTH or renting it from the local DVD fellow.
Cost: Attractive

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The above article appeared in Indian Express on Sunday, June 29, 2008